Immigration Prosecutions Up

Note: the article below from the Syracuse TRAC progam is undated, but it appears to reflect a very recent posting:

The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during March 2006 the government reported filing 3255 new immigration prosecutions. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this number is up 12.9% over the previous month.
The comparisons of the number of defendants charged with immigration -related offenses are based on case-by-case information obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys.

When monthly 2006 prosecutions are compared with those of the same period in the previous year, the filings were up (16.6 percent). Prosecutions over the past year are still much higher than they were five years ago. Overall, the data show that the prosecutions are up 121.8 percent from levels reported in 2001.

The substantial growth in these cases is partly related to increases in the matters filed in U.S. Magistrate Courts. If magistrate cases are excluded and only Federal District Court cases are counted, the overall increase in immigration prosecutions is 16.3 percent instead of 121.8 percent. The evidence suggests that part of the difference may be the result of improvements in the recording of the magistrate cases by the Justice Department.